


The Shape of Rain

by theoceanpath



Series: Constellations Dance on Your Skin [7]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2020-10-14 15:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20602985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoceanpath/pseuds/theoceanpath
Summary: 🦋





	1. Chapter 1

He wakes up when the lightning calls.

The figure rises from the breathing graveyard. Trails of mud arrange themselves into the fabric of the ocean; charred stalks split into feather threads upon the unbleached limestone of his skin. His clothes glitter with sand-glass, the emerald half of the rainbow, and tea-stained horizon. The glow in his eyes takes on the death of summer, and lips move.

Thunder finds him. Cats leap across the rice paddy in fear.

A storm is not a happy place. It's quiet in every way it shouldn't be, lashing out with crooked reincarnations of light and the sound of rocks crashing. The air feels like giant butterflies; his skin prickles with the thrumming of a thousand unseen wings. The clouds will not stop inventing tantrums so he gets up and leaves.

Another gust cuts through him like a scythe. He crouches down, pitying the rice, as the field braces itself for the downpour. His hair is a bedazzled mess, victim of the wind's increasingly frustrated attempts to coax it into a masterpiece.

The sky is moving fast.

He wobbles down the path. He finds a sign that speaks of hope and of legacy accompanied by a caricature of a human figure in a sunlit field. The man looks too happy and he wonders if people are normally that way. All he knows is the happiness of nature— the joy of honey, the muted giggles of water, the songs of flowers, the thing that makes birds sing. Humans must be fun creatures, he decides, and goes to find one.


	2. Chapter 2

It's that sort of magical night when everything is alive. The wind is bored and cruel, and the trees bask in its inglorious vibrato, tossing their bony crowns while projectiles slam through the gusts like unwilling arrows. The horizon camouflages itself, splattering the clouds into formless ocean. One could barely hear tortured wingbeats above the wetlands as a pack of feathers tumbles down the funnel sky.

Another creature has lost its way tonight.

The swan crashes into a pile of rope and drawstring burlap, bleeding from wings folded in a hundred directions by the brute force of the storm. Rain spares no mercy for this lone pathfinder left behind by its flock. Bullet-fierce drops continue to pound its weakening frame as the wooden cart on which it lies reverberates with the insignia of the recklessness of nature.

A sheen of dirt punctuates labored breaths; debris has wedged itself between ragged tail feathers and bent wingtips that could have graced the homes of emperors once. Gone is the splendor of snow-touched plumage reminiscent of white gossamer and silk fabric, glass beads speckled with iridescent starfire, dotted trails of opalescent crystals that turn sapphire where the light hits, and a pair of silver tiaras overlapping in the front, inlaid with mother of pearl and rhinestones like twin crescent moons. Fate has exacted its revenge, and the bird of winter colors bows its head at the unfair justice.

More rain wrings out the burnt gray above, beseiging the earth and failing to subdue it as the fallen swan lifts its eyes in a final plea to the heavens. Yet now its wish angers the thunder, and there really is no hope.

But—

A savior comes in the form of a slender figure clothed in lakes and paddies, who smells of fresh rice soaked in rain. The human male takes it to a sheltered place with no wind and no rain and steady warmth. The swan's eyes waver with the flickering lamps until it can only see darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

The aftermath of a storm is too quiet.

There is always music in this place. Pianofortes and violins spill fragmented melodies out of rusty strings and smudged keys.

“Mimi! Nana!” calls the owner of the house to the cats frequenting these halls.

The rice fairy watches as the man in the white mask and black gloves comes and goes like a phantom. Trails of many rivers course through his garment in hypnotizing swirls, edges dripping with golden sand. In the dawn light, the fabric is almost opalescent, a painstakingly-wrought map of wandering star paths through the crooked orbitals of the universe.

The masked phantom rarely speaks, but he pours liquid words into his bowstring, plucking and drawing them out with each sweep of his deft fingers. Today it’s violet night and moon pearls, golden dewdrops and forbidden flowers. The rice fairy listens.

And the injured swan gets a new chance at life.


	4. Chapter 4

Time is passing. The fields grow stronger and bolder and the rice fairy knows his time in this world is coming to an end.

He leaves three things in the swan’s care before he goes, entrusting to him the future: his hope, his legacy, and the blessing of the harvest wrapped in his final wish.

First, a tender stalk. Green with life and promise, yet cursed with a touch of sadness for the months it wastes away in search of spring.

_They will not love you with no flowers_

_They only come when you bleed hard enough_

_Two weeks of blood petals and they remember you_

_When your tears have dried and fallen_

_They leave you again, alone_

_Such is the fate of the cherry blossom._

Second, a handful of empty husks. Chaff unwanted, discarded, light enough to ride the currents of the wind to the heartless, unfettered wastelands.

_Fire, plague_

_Floods and earthquakes_

_Destruction— _

_Prince of raptors_

_Burnt till your scars turn golden_

_You who bow to no one_

_Shall walk the earth alone_

_And build it anew._

Third, a cup of grains as white as snow, the fruit of summer stored for the cold months.

_Harness the mist_

_Reign in the frost_

_Ice burns fiercest in solitude_

_You are a fortress_

_Lonesome steel breaker_

_Pale child of the moon_

To the first go the woodlands and lighted paths, muted dawn haze and seedlings nurtured in cricketsong and the softness of the blushing earth.

To the second, the rocky crags, the cliff-pierced, vulture-ridden sky, mountains too heavy for the clouds to lift up, things that leap and fall where only the bravest survive.

To the third, walls of ice and the water that surrounds and shapes them all, the lifeblood of the creatures of the earth, the bounty of farmers, and the delight of mankind.

_Eldest and youngest_

_Spring and Autumn_

_Children of the equinox_

_Rhythms of the harvest;_

_The other, a being of darkness_

_The cycle goes on._

“Pour the grains into a stream, toss the chaff over the cliff and let the wind take it, bury the green shoot into fertile soil. Spare a lullaby for them all_—_ the song of the planting, song of the harvest, song of the water that brings them to life.”

“Take these,” he instructs the swan, “and do not forget me.”

The next day is the appointed time of the reaping. The phantom watches the sun rise and fall through the window and storms into his piano until it sags under the weight of his melancholy. The rice fairy steps out the door and never comes back.

_He came with the rice. And so he left,_ murmurs the phantom, now alone with his shadows again.

The swan dances under the painfully empty midnight sky, greeting his friend from afar, taking comfort in how the fairy of the fields has made it back to its resting place at last.

The rice has died for them to live. It is gone, and only those who suffered understand the sacrifice. Men do not journey across oceans to marvel at it; no pilgrimages are held in its name. Farmers plan for the next season. The water grows weary and leaves. The clouds never stay.

Maybe the frogs will remember. Maybe the dragonflies will.

But the legacy lives on. 


End file.
